


The Glint of Light on Broken Glass

by cassieoh



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Nuclear Winter, Post-Nuclear War, The Moon Landing, but it's ultimately a hopeful story, demonic activity used for good deeds, heaven and hell are businesses, not gonna lie there's a lot fo angst, post-apocalyptic fluff, predominantly book canon, the Bentley and her love of Crowley, water to wine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:40:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22177210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassieoh/pseuds/cassieoh
Summary: They stopped the Heavenly (or Hellish, depending on whom one asked) Apocalypse and went back to their lives. They fed ducks and they ate decadent meals and drank expensive wine. And they did not notice as the humans hurtled closer and closer to disaster. When the true apocalypse happened neither Heaven nor Hell was involved in the slightest, it was all down to humans’ thoughts and humans’ ideas and the humans’ hatred of each other.And so, Heaven watched in horror and Hell in delight as the humans tore atoms asunder to kill and to desecrate and to destroy. Then, they very carefully decided it was maybe a good idea to give things a few years to settle, after all, they still had their agents on Earth.No need for further involvement.Thus, three decades pass.Today, Sophie Greenbriar decides to search the ruins of what was once Soho for salvage.[AKA a nuclear apocalypse fic about home and the people who become that]
Relationships: Anathema Device/Newton Pulsifer, Aziraphale & Warlock Dowling, Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Brian/Wensleydale (Good Omens), Crowley & Warlock Dowling
Comments: 34
Kudos: 129
Collections: Good Omens Holiday Exchange 2019





	The Glint of Light on Broken Glass

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bluethenstaub](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluethenstaub/gifts).



> Rating is for frank and sometimes graphic discussion of the effects of nuclear war, some mild body horror (w.r.t. to demons). 
> 
> My gift for scorpling in the holiday exchange <3<3

**_33 Years Ago_ **

In the end, neither Heaven nor Hell played a part in the Ending of the World despite their best (and worst) efforts. The apocalypse was the subject of a hurried series of interdimensional phone calls in which responsibility was debated and scrabbled over before all parties were, rather reluctantly, forced to concede that it had not in fact been the doing of anyone save the humans themselves. This was an embarrassing discovery for all parties involved who quite wished to have been informed that they could have taken the epoch off and gotten in a little light reading. 

Heaven held a staff meeting (“your attendance is required and no, snacks will not be provided”) where Uriel presented a number of well reasoned arguments for why this all might really turn out to be in Heaven’s favor. Michael nodded along, all the while doodling seven dimensional cubes on a notepad, before calling Gabriel up to speak. For his part, Gabriel claimed that his agent on Earth, his oldest and most loyal agent (save that one little slip up a few years back), had clearly seen the error of his ways and helped to bring about the End of Times. Of course, he should have filed the proper paperwork first, but really, who were they to argue with results? Agreeable murmuring filled the conference room. Gabriel stood before them, looking rather pleased with himself, and made the suggestion he’d been thinking about ever since the first bombs fell. 

“Perhaps,” he paused to ensure that he had everyone’s undivided attention. One of the Cherubs was floating near the coffee maker. He gave it a long look, completely with jaw-cracking smile. The Cherub settling back into their seat. Gabriel nodded, “Perhaps,” he said again, “We might simply stand back and wait to see what happens.” 

He expected uproar, he expected chaos, he expected anything except the silence that greeted that pronouncement. Gabriel was not used to receiving no reaction. He cleared his throat and started to say it again, perhaps they simply hadn’t understood? 

“I’m saying,” he said, “That we might-”

Michael waved one hand to cut him off, “We heard you, Gabriel. I’m just not sure why that’s your plan. Surely it makes more sense to take this opportunity to win as many souls for Heaven as we might?”

Gabriel nodded, “Normally I would be all for that! You know me, Michael, I love when the quarterly numbers are nice and hefty. But, there’s the small matter of the radiation. We might not be humans, but-”

Michael glanced down at the seven dimensional cube. 

“But, we’re made of radiation.” 

Gabriel nodded, “We won’t be in danger for a while yet, but why take the risk at all?”

Michael seemed to think on this for a long moment before turning to the rest of the table. “Thoughts? Objections?” 

The cherub from before quivered, but did not brighten to indicate a desire to speak. Uriel opened their mouth a few times before ultimately subsiding with a sharp-edged scowl. 

“Now, what about your agent, Gabriel?” 

Gabriel bowed his head, though the smile never slipped from his face. “Unfortunately,” he said, his tone the perfect mix of sure and somber (he knew because he’d practiced it for weeks in the late 600s BC), “he’ll have to remain on Earth. He’s already been exposed to far too much radiation to return.” 

Michael’s expression did not shift as the Archangel nodded, “A pity.” 

Michael paused and then a smile appeared, “Although, I suppose he _did_ choose humanity. Let him live or die with that choice.”

The meeting adjourned soon after that. Gabriel waited until everyone else had left the room before crossing to the coffee machine. He might not need it, but there was something comforting about the ritual of fresh brewed hydrogen with just a dash of cream. He prepared his mug and took a long sip. 

He did not hold a grudge against Aziraphale for his decisions during the attempted apocalypse nearly seven years ago. How could he? The angel had been away from the Host for so long, surely that much time on Earth would alter even the most sure angel’s resolve. No, he blamed himself. He should have kept a closer eye, brought Aziraphale home for more shore leave. 

He finished off the cup and started towards his office. 

He supposed he might spend the afternoon shredding the Principality Aziraphale’s file. 

They wouldn’t be needing it ever again after all. 

* * *

Hell learned of the Apocalypse about five minutes after Heaven did. The delay was due, in part, to Archangel Michael’s attempt to foist the task of calling Hell off on a passing Seraph who promptly feigned an inability to speak due to an excess of eyes and a lack of mouths. Of course, Michael knew this was a lie as this particular Seraph had been the reigning champion of Heaven’s biweekly karaoke night for the last three centuries. But, before she could find the words to call them on the rather stunning lie, they had dipped into a quick bow and floated away. The rest of the delay was entirely the fault of Michael’s inability to find the little scrap of paper on which she’d written Hell’s number. 

Hell had a great many phone numbers, in fact, the esteemed reader will not be surprised to learn that they have likely called Hell many times in their life; any call center which plays advertisements instead of hold music, Tesco’s customer complaint line, and every single pay-by-phone billing system redirect to Hell’s call center. It was a plot by Hell’s Agent on Earth in the early days of phone systems. 

What this meant for Michael is that there were a great many numbers she might have called to get in contact with Hell, but all save one would end with her waiting through genuinely terrible elevator music. 

So, she rummaged about her pockets until her fingers finally grasped the perfectly crisp bit of paper. Her own hand curled across it in swirling, spidery script; 

_80085_

She rolled her eyes. 

Right. 

She dialed the number. 

The phone rang. 

Michael waved off Gabriel who was gesturing for her to hurry up. They were going to watch the rest of the bombs fall from the Earth Observation Deck. He tapped his watch, she held up the phone. 

It rang again. 

If they didn’t hurry up she was going to miss the last of the bombs. 

Ring. 

Surely they wouldn’t ignore her? She knew that this number was a direct line to-

“Yezzz.” The snarling buzz greeted her. Michael grimaced. Hell really was very unpleasant to deal with. 

“Right, hello there,” Michael said, doing her best to remain professional. “I am calling to inform you, as per our Accord, that the time of Humanity on Earth has Ended.” 

A long silence greeted her. 

“Did you hear me?” she asked after the line began to crackle. Hell was, well, _below._ Perhaps reception was not good. “I said-”

“I heard you,” the thing on the other end of the line said. Their voice popped and fizzed, sounding uncomfortably like there was blood welling up in their throat, “I wazz juzzt trying to figure out why Heaven would be zzo zztupid.”

Oh, that was just beyond the pale.

“This was not our doing!” Michael snapped, “We would never have used something so dirty. That’s more your style.” 

The demon did not respond. 

Gabriel popped his head around the corner again. Michael held up one finger. 

“I didn’t have anything else to tell you,” she told the demon, “Just that we’ll be refraining from visiting Earth until the radiation subsides, I expect you’ll do the same.” 

Demons might revel in filth and disease, but they were made of the same stuff as angels and would suffer just as badly from too much exposure to their component bits. 

“We’ll be in contact,” the demon bit out, “about Heaven’zzz dezzision to end the world without informing uzzz.” 

Then, before Michael could protest, they hung up. She looked down at the phone in her hand with a scowl. Fine, she thought, let them be angry. It wasn’t like they could do anything right now anyway. She slid the phone into her pocket and hurried towards the observation deck, hoping she hadn’t missed the obliteration of ALL the big cities. 

In Hell, Lord Beelzebub threw their phone across the tiny office they’d claimed as their own. Hell operated entirely on the open-office model with no cubicles or hope of privacy, but Beelzebub firmly believed that seniority should carry with it the benefit of being able to rip one’s hair out in peace without the lesser demons catching you. The phone shattered. 

Beelzebub threw themself into the nightmare of a desk chair they’d acquired during the German brutalism period of furniture design. Guaranteed to turn anyone’s back into an absolute ruin of agony (or your money back!), Lord Beelzebub loved it. They settled in, twisting so their lower vertebrae were misaligned in just the right way[1]. They scowled. 

**_The End._ **

It was really here. 

A few years back Beelzebub might have been ecstatic, eager to just have it all over and done with. But, now? Now, they weren’t prepared, the Horde wasn’t anywhere close to a war-footing and there would be no time to whip them into shape. 

They groaned and knocked their head against their desk a few times. 

Humanity destroyed and Hell didn’t even get to play a part. Lucifer was going to be impossible to live with for the next few eons. Beelzebub made a note to assign Asmodeus to attend to Lucifer’s whims for a while. Being a Prince of Hell had very few perks, but not having to spend the next millennia being flayed open and sewn back together with one’s own tendons was one in which Beelzebub intended to partake.

This entire situation was the pits[2], they thought as they began to fill out Asmodeus’ transfer paperwork, there wasn’t anything Beelzebub liked about-

Oh. 

_Oh_ , well at least this solved that little _Crawly_ problem for Hell. 

He wouldn’t last long out there. 

Beelzebub reached for their intercom. 

“Lock the Gatezzz. No one in or out.”

* * *

**_Today_ **

**_Soho, London_ **

* * *

The nuclear Apocalypse isn’t really turning out the way Sophie Greenbriar had hoped it might. Oh, of course she had never _hoped_ for the end of the world, not specifically or with any more intent than a child who’s just been told their bedtime is non-negotiable would wish for it all to just End. No, back then, back Before as she thinks of it now, she was a decent person who would really rather billions of people _not_ die in agony. If given her druthers, Sophie-from-Before would have liked to live in a world in which there was enough food for everyone, the politicians genuinely cared for their constituents, and maybe someone had figured out how to make birds act as WiFi routers. So, no, she wasn’t and isn’t a fan of the end of the world in the slightest. But, if it was going to happen? Well... Sophie is forty years old, she was born at the end of an especially warm day in late July of 1984. She was young when the bombs fell, but old enough to remember and have that sharp line between Before and Now. She’d spent seven years growing up on a steady diet of video games and movies set in the days after global nuclear war. She’d enjoyed exploring the wastelands with her always loyal companions by her side and her super strength, granted by the radiation obviously. She’d adored the unique and wondrous animals that filmmakers promised would roam the world, glowing and hunting and general being wonderfully weird. When she was seven the adults had seemed convinced it was all going to end, they gathered around televisions and radios and worried about fires on the road and politics. She hadn’t agreed with them- how could Atlantis and fish falling from the sky be anything but good? That was just fun!

She thought it far less fun when six years, six months, and six days after the adults all seemed to forget the fish and the tornadoes and the aliens and everything else, the bombs fell. 

No, Sophie Greenbriar isn’t a fan. 

It’s just... she figures that if it was all going to end anyway, if there wasn’t some way to stop it or fix it, well, wouldn't it at least be even vaguely like they’d all wanted to pretend it could be? Yes, she spends her days exploring the wastes, but the animals are less ‘glowing-wonders’ and more ‘diseased, cancerous lumps’. 

She leans over and pokes at what she thinks had probably been a stove, or maybe a large reptile-egg incubator, before the building partially collapsed. The edges of the unidentifiable metallic lump are completely rusted out. She picks at a bit of the rust with her fingernail to reveal even more rust. She sighs, layers of rust do not bode well for the delicate electronics inside. 

“Anything?” Sophie’s wife, Deathcap Annie, calls from across the pile of rubble they’re both searching though. Sophie grunts. She moves on. The have a long walk back and she doesn’t want to carry broken tech the whole way, not with the summer sun beating down and water as precious as it currently is. 

“Bingo!” Sophie looks around, seeing the other members of their little scouting party poking their heads out of doorways and around corners at the high pitched voice. In the center of the room, atop the largest pile of rubble from the collapsed floors above, Pip Nolastname stands with his hands raised above his head and a triumphant smile on his face. The other scouts go back to their work, drifting ever further away from Sophie. 

“What’d you find, Pip?” Sophie asks, she can’t and doesn’t want to help the fond smile that crosses her face. She might not have managed to get anyone to call her a cool name (when she’d tried people inevitably gave her funny looks and said “If that’s really want you want Miss Greenbriar,” which rather defeated the purpose) but Pip had showed up in the middle of the night nearly four months back, boldly declaring that he had no one and would be living with them now please. Sophie and Deathcap had shared a look and agreed. 

“There’s a whole box of light bulbs here!” the ten year old crows, “They’re really weirdly shaped!” He clambers down the pile towards Sophie gathering speed until he hits her, staggering them both back a few steps. She takes the box from his hands and the air punches from her lungs. 

“Oh lord,” she whispers, “they’re fluorescent! Pip! You eagle eyed demon you!” She’s just about to wrap him in a crushing hug when she hears it. 

A low chuckle, the rasp of wind across broken teeth. 

The creeping dread all humans now know to fear and to pay attention to. 

She shoves the box of bulbs into Pip’s hands and whirls on her heel, placing herself between the child and the abomination.

“‘S not very nice, using our names like that and then acting all afraid when we show up,” it says. Sophie flinches away, stumbling back with her hand behind herself, pushing Pip along. 

There are two of them standing there, the closer is the one who spoke and its clearly the leader of the pair. It looks nearly human, nearly believable as a being that was meant to walk the earth. But there’s something in the way its skin stretches across the plains of its face, tight in some places, loose in others, that turns her stomach. It only has a sparse few tufts of hair and even from this distance, Sophie can see the roving masses of fleas. She takes another step back. 

The thing raises one hand, flesh sloughing off in long strips, the middle finger and the thumb pressed together, preparing to snap. 

No. 

Sophie refuses to allow this. She hears a clatter behind her and knows that Deathcap has come to stand with her, protecting Pip (dying together, a terrible little voice snarls). 

“This is a bad idea,” Deathcap tells the demons. The thing lowers it’s hand, tilting its head to the side in a cruel parody of curiosity. Her voice is sure in a way Sophie’s can’t be, hasn’t ever been in the face of such danger. It gives Sophie the courage to speak. 

“You can’t do this!” Sophie says and her voice trembles but Deathcap is there and Pip is hidden and she doesn’t mind a tremble or two. She does her best to stand strong, to keep her shoulders straight and her eyes on the things before her, but they’re hard to look at, harder still to even begin to _think_ about defying. 

The monsters laugh, broken concrete scraping across soil turned to glass and despite her best intentions, Sophie flinches away. She feels Deathcap press closer against her back, her little bag of scavenged treasures trapped between their bodies. The larger of the two man-shaped beings steps up, his broken feet barely lift from the ground, shattered bones straining obviously, blatantly against thin flesh. 

“And why not?” asks the other one. Sophie can’t look at it properly; her eyes slide off before she can pick up more than the impression of more teeth than a jaw should reasonably be expected to contain. 

She swallows back her fear and forces herself to speak, “Because.... Because of The Agreement.” 

Everyone knows about The Agreement, children are taught the exact wording long before they learn to read or write, little voices piping up around campfires and fallout shelters, repeating the words slowly at first and then quicker as they grow more confident. They’re twisted into rhyming songs, little ditties that the children shriek as they play and gentle cadences that mothers use to soothe colicky babies. Hunters use the timing of the words to know how long to pause before taking a shot and everyone knows that the full text is just long enough to boil away impurities in water. 

The words rise in her throat, pressing against her tongue. They’re more a part of her now than her own name or the little house she’d loved so much Before. 

She opens her mouth to speak, but the thing before her beats her to it. 

“Human,” he pauses and coughs, disease spewing from his lungs and into the air[3]. He clears his throat with a rattle-gurgle of phlegm and continues, “Human agreements mean nothing to us.” It’s a statement and a promise and Sophie reaches back to take Deathcap’s hand. They’ve survived so much, the bombs, the epidemics, the poison rain that falls every autumn, she refuses - absolutely, categorically, staunchly - to die without her love’s hand in her own. She feels little calluses and the scar from when Deathcap was little, before the bombs fell, and she touched a hot kettle while her mum’s back was turned. Deathcap’s fingers tighten around her own. 

The thing raises his hands, rotting fingernails blacken before her eyes and when he presses his thumb to his middle finger once more she knows- 

This is it. 

Every human knows that gesture, knows what comes next. 

She’s going to die screaming. 

She closes her eyes. Opens them again because she doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction. 

Then, Pip giggles. Sophie opens her eyes, startled from her fear. The demon is still standing in front of her, still has its fingers raised, ready to rend them from the face of the world, but now... 

Oh. 

_Oh._

Sophie smiles. 

Pip laughs again and suddenly the hand in Sophie’s isn’t holding on for dear life anymore. 

The demon freezes--it does the strange curious head movement again. “Why are you laughing?” it asks. 

“They’re laughing,” The hiss curls up from the rubble at their feet and the wind through the shattered windows and also the throat of the shadowed figure standing just behind the interlopers, “Because, it’s not a _human_ Agreement, mate.” 

The demons turn to face the newcomer but he’s no longer there. Instead, in the space it takes to blink he’s somehow moved to stand beside Sophie. She smiles up at him. She’s never met him before of course, but her second cousin had once, many years ago and everyone in their little camp knows what sunglasses mean. 

Safety. 

Surety. 

In the space of another blink there’s a fourth figure in the room, this one the photo-negative of the being beside Sophie- all creams and whites and sparkling eyes. 

“It really is quite simple, my boy,” he says, “You’ve stepped rather far outside your bounds.” 

The demons are given no time to respond before the angel snaps his fingers and a powerful wave of Good and Light and Love sweeps through the space. Sophie watches as the creatures before them crumple in on themselves, collapsing as the gravity at their centers suddenly increased. Their limbs fell to their chests, tearing like wet tissue-- they’re solid and present in one moment and then the room is filled with brilliant light. Sophie has to look away, it’s too bright, too much. Her gaze snags on the other man, the one standing beside Pip. He sunglasses reflect the light back at his partner, white against dark hair and quirked eyebrows. 

Sunglasses grimaces but doesn’t seem bothered by the violence otherwise. 

“Oh,” Deathcap breathes, “Oh, they’re lovely.” 

Sophie blinks the last of the brilliant light from her eyes and looks around. She sucks in a breath when she sees them. A riot of flowers has erupted on every patch of exposed soil. Sophie has to fight back a sudden urge to cry. Everything is so very grey these days, the sky, the earth, the buildings, there’s no color at all save blood and bile. But these? There are delicate periwinkles, vibrant greens, a pop of startling crimson speckled throughout. Sophie doesn’t know any of their names, but they call out to her soil in a way nothing else ever has. 

She takes a step forward, desperate to touch the paper thin petals, to find out if they’re real. Deathcap comes along with her, refusing to release her hand after the scare they’ve just had. Sophie reaches the edge of the closest patch and falls to her knees. She reaches out and brushes one fingertip across the wavered edge of cream-colored petal. 

Distantly, as if through a thick radiation proof wall, Sophie hears Sunglasses say, “Really, angel? It wasn’t enough to get rid of them? You had to go and add flowers to the deal? You know you don’t have-” 

Then, she can’t think of anything save the bloom because it’s cool against her fingers, thin, fragile in a way nothing is anymore. She can just barely see the late afternoon light filtering through, lighting the veins. 

It’s soft. 

It’s the skin at the back of Deathcap’s knees, the first brush of lips that summer when they were sixteen and the acid rains had come, forcing them to run and hide and _oh_ how they’d laughed together. She adores Deathcap with everything in her soul, but she’d forgotten what it was like to be that free, that innocent. Deathcap joins her on the ground. She touches a bright blue bloom and turns to Sophie, her eyes wide with wonder. 

“I love you,” Sophie says because she realizes suddenly that they’re only alive by the grace of, well, the beings currently being peppered with questions by Pip. 

Deathcap steals a quick kiss, “Let’s go save our saviors, yeah?” 

They stand back up and turn to the little group across the room. 

Now, without the haze of terror, Sophie can really look at the others. They’re nothing like what she would expect. Sunglasses is young and slick, put together in a way she’s never seen before. He’s handsome in an intimidating sort of way, all sharp edges and the impression of a reflective high-rise despite being only a scant few inches above Sophie’s height. The other one, the one who gave them the flowers, is... Sophie doesn't think she has the words to describe how looking at him makes her feel. He looks like the sort of overwhelming hug one received from their distant uncles or like the last beams of sunshine glinting across freshly fallen snow, a little cool, a little overwhelming, but full of the promise of future fun and so much love she wasn’t sure any human could contain it. 

The fact that he’s wearing a rather tattered sweater vest won’t occur to Sophie until weeks down the line. At that point she’ll start laughing and be unable to explain why to anyone save Deathcap and Pip who understood the incongruity of being saved by a man who appeared to be an especially stern librarian fallen on hard times. 

That’s later though, right now Sunglasses is reaching out to pat Pip twice on the head, short taps of the kind one might give an especially smelly dog. Sophie smiles in sympathy. Pip isn’t the most pleasant child to touch, he’s never liked bathing and proudly cultivates a thick crust of grime, especially after a long day spent picking through the rubble. 

Deathcap stands and pulls Sophie to her feet. 

“I probably shouldn’t have picked one,” she says, “But, I’ve always wanted to do this.” 

“Do-?” Sophie starts to ask, but Deathcap is already reaching forward, a tiny crimson blossom pinched between two fingers. She’s got the very tip of her tongue poking between her lips in concentration as she tries to secure the flower behind Sophie’s ear. There’s a little furrow between her brows and the smile lines at the corners of her mouth are clearly visible and Sophie doesn’t think she’s ever been more in love. 

“Oh no, don’t trouble yourselves at all about that,” Sophie jumps as the one who had made the flowers appears just beside Deathcap. “I’m afraid they follow me wherever I go, no shortage of wildflowers in London these days.” 

Sophie touches the flower behind her ear. What would it be like, she wonders, to bring such beauty with you everywhere you trod. She’s a scavenger, she makes a living out of tearing the pieces of the old world apart to help the new one survive. Sure, sometimes the things she brings back are fashioned into something approaching beauty, but she never gets to stick around for that bit. 

“Thank you,” she says before she realizes she’s even thought about saying it. He waves his hand dismissively.

“No need for any of that,” the being says, “It’s our job.” He gestures between himself and Sunglasses. Then, “Oh where are my manners, I’m Aziraphale and my lovely associate over there is Crowley.” Sunglasses smiles and tries to move away from Pip who has clearly decided that he wants to cling to him and never let go. 

“Associate?” Crowley asks, “Angel, I’m hurt. Six thousand years and that’s all I am to you?” 

He’s clearly joking, though you wouldn’t know it from his tone of voice. Pip takes his moment of distraction as an opportunity to launch himself forward and wrap himself around Crowley’s legs. Crowley looks down, a raised eyebrow visible even over the brim of his shades. 

“Yes, hello,” he says, “Please stop that.” 

Pip does not stop that.

Aziraphale begins to make his way towards the door and now that he’s moving onto new ground Sophie can see the way the concrete crumbles beneath his feet, falling to dust and then being subsumed by rich loam and tender shoots of living, wonderful greenery. 

“Angel,” Crowley says, drawing the word out in a low drawl. Sophie turns away to hide her smile because that’s the exact tone of voice she uses with Deathcap when she’s not getting her way. It’s nice to know that others have found themselves love as well, even in such dire circumstances. “Please remove this from me.” Despite his dehumanizing words, Crowley’s hand is gentle atop Pip’s head. The boy hugs tighter to his leg. Sophie opens her mouth to scold him away, no need to annoy the people who saved them after all, but Aziraphale speaks first.

“Hmm,” he says and the smile on his face is outright mischievous, “It appears you’ve developed a bit of a growth, my dear.”

Crowley makes a noise that Sophie has never heard before, but which, if pressed, she would describe as halfway between a hiss and a snarl and less threatening than either of those. 

Aziraphale has reached the doorway now. 

“Well, come along, dear,” he says. Crowley makes that noise again and begins the long process of peeling Pip from his legs. Sophie doesn't envy him; the boy is an octopus with superglue for tentacles.

It dawns on her suddenly that they're about to leave. She moves towards Aziraphale. “Wait,” she says and then pauses because she hadn’t had any sort of follow-up to that.

Aziraphale seems to understand her impulse. 

“We really can’t stay,” he tells her. “We weren’t meant to be here in the first place but Crowley-”

“Really didn’t like those two,” Crowley cuts in, rolling his eyes. He’s got a fond sort of look about him, one Sophie recognizes from her own parents (God rest their souls). Her mother had never had a positive word to say about her father, but she’d worn that exact look for the entirety of their marriage. 

Aziraphale laughs, low and pleasant and something broken in Sophie’s chest heals just that little bit more. 

“Right,” she says, “Sorry, I understand.” And she does. It would be selfish to ask them to stay, there are so many others, so many people who’ve never seen flowers or grass or felt this sort of peace. She can’t ask them to stay. 

“Thank you,” she says. She holds out one hand to Aziraphale and he takes it, his fingers smooth and warm beneath her own. 

Then, she watches as Crowley peels Pip from his leg. He pats the boy on the head, a gesture that normally received a scoff of annoyance from the boy. Now though, he leans into the touch, clearly reveling in the sensation. Crowley guides him back towards Sophie and Deathcap, pushing him gently forward until he’s close enough for Deathcap to wrap her arms around his shoulders, pulling him close against her side. 

Then, Crowley gives them all a wide grin and a nod and leaves the shop. It’s only when he’s nearly out that Sophie realizes how carefully he sidestepped the newly grown patches of grass and flowers.

Aziraphale grants them a final smile of his own before turning to follow Crowley from the ruined shopfront. 

“Flowers?” Crowley can be heard asking as they move away, “Really? Because purifying things isn’t enough for you, now you have to manifest decorations?”

A loud sniff. 

“Oh don’t you give me that. You know that’s different!” 

“I fail to see how it’s any diff-”

There are two loud metallic noises and the voices are suddenly muffled. Sophie gathers herself enough to cross to the door. 

There’s a car there; huge, black, and clearly vintage even before the bombs. 

It’s- 

It’s perfect. That’s all she can think. Everything is at least partially destroyed these days, but this car is pristine. 

“Is that-?” Pip asks from her elbow. 

“A car,” Sophie breathes, “That’s a car.” 

The engine roars to life and Sophie’s heart sings. Before the bombs she knew people had been worried about pollution and the environment and the effect of petrol of endangered birds or somesuch, but those worries have long since fallen by the wayside and all she can think when she hears the sound of an engine is--

_We’re gonna make it._

_We’re going to live._

The car starts to pull away, faint strains of riotous music escaping the closed windows, and Sophie turns back to her little family. 

“Come on,” she says, “That’s enough for one day. Let’s get home.” 

She takes Deathcap’s hand and ruffles Pip’s hair and they start back towards their camp, happier than they have been in years.

The entire way home she feels the little flower brushing against her ear and, that night, before she goes to bed, she presses it carefully between the pages of the little sketchbook she tries to keep up with. 

She’s never going to forget how that love feels.

She falls asleep beside her wife and dreams of springtime showers and fresh baked pies.

* * *

_**The M40** _

* * *

There are two main camps into which one might fall into when contemplating the status of the Bentley in the days after thermonuclear war. In the first, are the pessimists, who point out that Crowley was surely in London when it all happened, why should the Bentley still be functional? Much less _drivable_ after thirty-plus years without access to petrol and being subjected to acid rains and dust storms (among the myriad other exciting new meteorological events the residents of the British Isles had been given the opportunity to experience in that time). The second group are the optimists who, perhaps naively, posit that the car’s owner simply took very good care of it and had access to a garage to protect the paint job. As for the petrol, well, that’s easy, they claim, perhaps it’s actually one of those electric cars that had just been entering the market in the 90s and was simply modeled to look like a 1926 Bentley. 

Of course, neither the pessimists nor the optimists are correct. That should come as no surprise to the esteemed reader as it is the way of the world in the vast majority of situations. 

The truth is this-- the Bentley still runs because she is Crowley’s and Crowley refuses to contemplate a world in which he does not have her. She still plays music, still changes all tapes to Queen, because the world is huge and new and terrible and Crowley needs _something_ to stay the same. The Bentley isn’t alive, not really, but she’s aware and she knows that she needs to run without petrol and play her music and not rust, no matter how the air burns and tears at her. 

She refuses to hurt her demon. She did that once, on that strange day so many years ago when she burned and exploded and then when neither of those things happened. 

She’s not alive, doesn’t have memories. 

But, she loves her demon. 

Just now, he was sitting in her driver’s seat, caressing the curve of the steering wheel and complaining, at length, about the state of the roads before them. 

“It’s just untenable,” Crowley says, jabbing one finger towards the jagged section of road that has sheared off in front of them. He twitches the finger upwards, glaring as the road knits itself back together just in time for the Bentley to roll across. 

“Will you go to the radio tonight?” Aziraphale asks. 

Crowley swallows. He wants to, desperately wants to slip away in the night to turn on the radios and call out and listen and maybe tonight will be the night be actually receives a response, maybe tonight will be the night he finds-

He glances to Aziraphale; he’s got his head tilted to the side, against the glass but not faced away from Crowley. The position tips his head back, forcing him to look down his nose at Crowley, his eyes nearly closed, bare slits of color against his skin. 

He looks thin and Crowley knows he won’t go to the radios tonight. Knows he won’t be able to leave Aziraphale looking like this. 

“No,” he whispers and Aziraphale hums his understanding. 

He’s not thin physically, Crowley thinks, not even the end of the world is enough to affect Aziraphale’s corporation like that. It’s in his aura, his very presence. He feels small and narrow beside Crowley and Crowley hates it. He hates that Aziraphale exhausts himself try to fix the problem that the humans caused for themselves, but he also can’t blame him. 

The world is awful, broken and shattered by the very humans he and Aziraphale have spent the last 6000 years living alongside. But, it wasn’t the common people who broke it. Most humans are like the little family they had met today. Kind and funny and good. 

Crowley would never blame Aziraphale for giving of himself to help them. He only blamed himself for not being able to help, to ease the burden in anyway for his angel. 

Out of the corner of Crowley’s eye, Aziraphale wavers. 

He sucks a breath through his teeth, reaches over and take up Aziraphale’s hand, squeezing it tightly in his own. They’ve reached the edge of the large area around Tadfield where the roads are better, smoothed over the last years by minor miracles meant to clear the way for the Bentley. 

“You can’t keep doing this,” he says after a long moment of silence. 

Aziraphale turns his head further towards the window, pressing more of his forehead against the cool glass. 

“Heaven’s not topping you up anymore,” Crowley continues. “They’re not paying any more attention to you than Below is to me, angel.” 

Aziraphale sighs and Crowley resists the urge to roll his eyes. Aziraphale wasn’t breathing, which means he specifically inhaled in order to sigh. It’s petty and Crowley loves him for it, no matter how much it annoys him in the moment. 

“Crowley, dear,” he mutters, low and exhausted, “I can’t do anything less than this.” 

“Being good doesn’t mean burning yourself out,” Crowley says. He’s gripping the steering wheel too tightly with his right hand even as he focuses his everything on not holding Aziraphale’s too tightly with his left. 

“I have to do my best,” Aziraphale argues, “This is the best I can do, all I have to give.” He turns fully away from Crowley, gazing out at the last of the trees as they exit the small wood. “Even this isn’t enough.” 

Silence descends once more upon the Bentley, punctuated only by the low rumble of tires across asphalt. Crowley wishes desperately that he’d thought to start a tape before saying anything. It will be too obvious if he reaches for one now. 

He glances to Aziraphale. 

His non-existent heart cracks in his chest. 

Because Aziraphale’s eyes are shining and Crowley suddenly knows what, knows _who_ this is about. 

“You couldn’t have saved her,” he whispers into the still air. “Them, that is, any of them.” 

Aziraphale raises his free hand and swipes at his face, trying to wipe away the traces of his weakness. 

“I know,” he says tremulously. 

“Then, why are you punishing yourself?” It burst from Crowley before he can stop it. It’s the thing that’s hung between them for decades, ever since Madame Tracy faded away despite Aziraphale’s best efforts. The terrible guilt that’s been eating away at Aziraphale, eroding his good cheer and optimism and terrifying Crowley senseless. 

“I-,” Aziraphale swallows, “I’m not.” 

Crowley snorts. “It sure looks like you are,” he says. The Air Base is just ahead of them, he can already see the guard tower peeking above the low hills. He doesn’t have much more time to say what he needs to say because he would never ask Aziraphale to be this vulnerable around the humans they both see as their responsibility. 

“Punishment isn’t Heaven’s job,” he finally says, quiet and sure, knowing this is possibly the most important thing he’s said in a long time. “And sorry, Aziraphale, but I’m the only demon allowed on Earth and I’m not about to punish you.” 

Aziraphale lifts his head from the window for the first time. His lips are slightly parted, his eyes wide. 

“Crowley,” he says, “I-”

The Bentley trundles to a stop at the gates of the base. There are three guards along the edge of the tower, all peering down at them with curious expressions. 

“Later, angel,” Crowley mutters. 

* * *

_**RAF Tadfield Air Base** _

* * *

The lead guard waves them through the gate and Crowley directs the Bentley forward. There’s a little watch building just inside the perimeter, where one of the guards had tried to stop them during the first Apocalypse had been stationed all those years ago. It has a little covered area out back where Crowley likes to park the Bentley, ready to bolt if they ever need to. He very carefully doesn’t think about all the roots they’ve grown since the world ended. It’s odd, he thinks as they exit the Bentley and each take up the bags of supplies they’d gathered on their trip into the city, to have so many ties to the Earth as it is now rather than as it was. Oh, of course he’d loved it Before, he’d been willing to die to save it after all. But, he’d not really been a part of it in the same way as he is now-- Neither of them had, really. He’d had friends, had enjoyed drinks in the sun with Leonardo and Freddie and a dozen others over the centuries, had grieved them all bitterly when they died and moved on because no one, not even a demon, could carry that much sadness within them forever, and he’d embraced all it meant to be human as fully as he could whenever possible. But, he’d never really been a part of it all. 

Sometimes Adam’s children call him Grandpa and that’s odd and wonderful in ways he can’t quite quantify. It’s not true of course, he wasn’t around to help raise Adam and the AntiChrist has never seen him as more than an especially odd friend of the family. But, he and Aziraphale have been there from the moment the children were born and they both know they’ll be here long after the humans are nothing but dust and for the first time in his entire existence, the idea of that doesn’t hurt so much. 

He wonders as they leave the garage, if it’s easier to think about these humans dying because he’s seen so very much death since the last time he was close to anyone? Or, is it just that in living among them, in attending birthday parties and Remembrance Days and soothing skinned knees and broken hearts, he’s somehow learned that lesson at the very core of humanity; love is loss and loss is love and that’s alright because you can’t stop it either way so why not embrace it while you have it?

He glances to the side. Aziraphale still looks exhausted, but he’s managed to find a smile now that they’re home. 

Crowley tries to let that be enough, tries to put aside his own worries for a bit longer. He’s always been an optimist, even in the direst of circumstances, and he’ll be damned again if he let’s an extra patch of flowers get him down when the rest of their trip went so well. 

"Crowley, Aziraphale!” The tallest guard is leaning over the railing, her gas mask yanked to the side to reveal Pepper’s broad grin. She waves at them and vaults the railing in a move far more fluid than one might expect from someone on the cusp of fifty years of age[4]. She holds onto the edge of the rail and swings her legs underneath, seeking out the vertical pole she and Adam had installed for just this purpose nearly three decades ago, just after they settled in this place. Then, with her legs wrapped tightly around the pole she slides to the ground, landing in a puff of dust. 

She sweeps her hair back from her face, gathering it up into a high puff. She complains some days about the way it feels pressed against her by her gas mask, but also staunchly refuses to cut it so she’s taken to keeping a collection of leather ties ready at all times. 

As soon as her hair is out of her way, she crossed the space between them, wrapping first Aziraphale and then Crowley in rib-cracking hugs. Pepper is strong, she’s always been of course, but she and Adam took on much of the burden of running this community and neither of them had ever been the type to shy away from manual labor. Crowley returns her hug with one arm before pulling back and rummaging around in the side satchel he filled with personal finds on the trip. There’s an old Bach tape, a number of pound coins, and a little paper bag filled with-

“You didn’t!” Pepper sounds so much younger now, like the girl they’d met first rather than the woman she is now. 

“I promised, didn’t I?” Crowley asks, “I might be a demon, but I’m a demon of my word.” 

Pepper takes the bag from him and peers inside, her eyes wide with delight. 

“Oh, I can’t believe you,” she says, “And they’re real? You didn’t, like, not find them and then poof some into this bag because you were embarrassed?” 

Crowley lays one hand on his chest and reels back in pretend agony, “How dare you?” he wails, “Slander! Angel, do you hear this? The human thinks I can’t manage to find some sweets.”

Aziraphale is smiling at them now, indulgent and fond and finally, finally, Crowley can see some of the exhaustion lifting away. 

Good, he thinks, we’re home and the air is clean here and we won’t be leaving again until your cheeks are full and those shadows under your eyes are long gone.

“I hear that,” Aziraphale says drily. “I’m afraid I must side with dearest Pippin, however.” The smile turns mischievous, “After all, I found those sweets when you said the building was empty.” 

Pepper barks out a laugh and, finally having made her selection, hands the bag back to Crowley. 

“Knew it,” she says with a grin. She glances back up at the guard tower and then at where the sun is just beginning to dip below the ever-present layer of sickly grey-green clouds. “I should get back. It’s great to have you two home again.” Then, she’s gone, trotting back towards the tower and shouting for the other guards to toss down the rope ladder. 

Aziraphale and Crowley watch her go. Crowley knows the feeling rising in his chest is fondness and love and all the other complicated emotions that their humans elicit in him these days, and he likes to think that Aziraphale feels the same, though it’s hard to tell from the placid expression on the angel’s face.

As they make their way through the small community, humans bustle past them in every direction. Some stop to chat for a moment with one or both of them, relaying little bits of news and funny stories and intel they’ve gathered on their own expeditions out from the safety of the compound. It seems the Oxford lot were getting rowdy again and they would need to keep an eye out for raiding along that front, though Mitchell, the human who brought the news, was confident that there were enough people still alive over there who remembered Aziraphale’s Rather-Dire-Warning[5] to keep them from doing anything too ill-advised.

Almost as soon as Mitchell has nodded his goodbyes, Anathema throws open the door to the workshop she’s claimed as her own. 

“Crowley,” she says with a slight nod, “Aziraphale, I have some updates on the prototype, if you want to look it over?”

Aziraphale sighs and it’s a soul deep thing. Crowley scowls at Anathema. “Can this wait, witch?” he asks, annoyed despite himself, “We’ve only just-”

“Oh tosh,” Aziraphale says, waving one hand. “She’s been working on this and is excited, the least I can do is look at it.” He slips his bags from his shoulders and holds them out to Crowley, who takes them reflexively. He stands and watches as Aziraphale rolls his shoulders, stretching them out before taking a few steps towards the workshop. With every step Crowley can see the exhaustion weighing more heavily upon him and suddenly he’s furious. 

“Newt did touch it yesterday,” Anathema is saying, “But it wasn’t turned on so I don’t think-”

“No,” Crowley snaps out. “Anathema, it can wait until morning. Angel, we’re going.” 

Aziraphale and Anathema stare at him and Crowley forces himself to stare back, selfishly grateful for his sunglasses. He’s tired, he feels like the weight of the world is pulling against his very bones, and he’s done practically nothing compared to Aziraphale over the last few days. Purifying the world is _hard_ and Crowley can't help because everything in his is diametrically opposed to that task. 

He can’t help Aziraphale make the water safe to drink or the food safe and nutritious. He can’t help him bring hope to the hearts of those they meet or bless the paths they will take. 

He can’t do any of that. 

But, he can do this. 

He can make sure that no one, not even a friend as old as Anathema, can take more than Aziraphale has to give. 

He can make sure his angel is safe and rested and ready to once more give of himself when the humans call to him.

He blinks. 

Looks away. 

Anathema and Aziraphale share a look and then Aziraphale leans in, murmuring something into her ear. She laughs, smiles, and gives him a quick hug before waving to Crowley and retreating back into the workshop. 

Aziraphale takes the few steps back towards Crowley. There’s a complicated look on his face that Crowley is in no mood to parse. So, instead of trying to explain his sudden anger, he refuses to give back the bags and instead begins walking towards their original destination once more. 

Aziraphale watches him go, his gaze burning holes in Crowley’s spine, but after only a few seconds he falls into step beside Crowley. 

“I am not so tired that I can’t help our friends,” he says quietly. 

“Hrm,” Crowley says. 

“But,” and now there’s a clear smile in Aziraphale’s voice. The little one that’s all for Crowley, “I do appreciate you looking out for me, my dear. No matter how unnecessary.”

Then, after another few minutes of silence. 

“You will, of course, be apologizing to Anathema for your behavior.” 

Crowley rolls his eyes and does not protest because, honestly, keeping Anathema happy is just good sense. 

They approach the little Quonset hut Aziraphale had claimed as his in those early days in companionable silence. Crowley grins, as he always does, when he sees the sign Adam and the Them had painted in that first year, their teenage hands clumsy around their paintbrushes and their shoulders set with their determination to find something cheerful in this damn place. 

_The Common Good(s)_

It’s not the bookshop. Nothing ever will be again. But, it’s _a_ shop and that’s important to Aziraphale in a way that Crowley can’t understand. The small space is filled to the brim with the results of their trips, little knick-knacks and pieces of machinery and every possible scrap of paper they come across. At the back there’s a curtain Crowley rescued from the ruins of what had probably been a rather quaint cottage, he hung it up on a thin rope, cordoning off the back quarter of the space. Then, he’d been a bit daring and pictured the sofa in the bookshop that he’d spent so many evenings slouched across. When he snapped his fingers there was a sofa. It wasn’t quite right, the color was muddier than Aziraphale’s had been and the legs slightly thicker, but it was close enough for government work and Crowley had immediately thrown himself down on it, sprawling in a way which no human could see and not be reminded of his rather more than normal number of vertebrae. In the years since he manifested the sofa, the space behind the curtain had slowly filled with the few copies of the books Aziraphale had owned that they could find. It was a paltry substitute for the collection he’d once had, but it was something. 

Now, Crowley makes his way through the cluttered front space, towards their little haven at the back, Aziraphale following in his wake. As soon as they are behind the curtain, Crowley drops the bags and begins rummaging around in the largest. Aziraphale watches him for a moment before sighing (again, Crowley thinks, Aziraphale’s lungs are getting quite the workout today) and turning away. 

Crowley watches out of the corner of his eye as Aziraphale goes to the small register and picks up the “While You Were Away” box. 

“Oh!” Aziraphale says, sounding suddenly far more chipper than he had, “Someone’s brought me a copy of Machiavelli!” He checks the log, “They took the cans of condensed milk, oh that’s not nearly enough, they should have at least helped themselves to some vegetables as well.” 

It’s a pretty good system, Crowley thinks, neither he nor Aziraphale need anything to survive and they’re durable enough to go into areas the humans can’t. So, they go out and they bring things back and the humans trade for those things. At first they’d tried to just give the supplies away, but soon found that the humans were leaving them items when their backs were turned, often things those humans really couldn’t afford to go without. 

So, now Aziraphale simply requests a bit of written knowledge in exchange and, thus, his collection grew. 

As soon as the bags are unloaded, Crowley collapses onto the sofa, feeling the tension leaking from his bones, ionizing radiation streaming from him, colliding with the lead of Aziraphale and reflecting back until he manages to reel himself back in. He’s tired, but he has nothing on Aziraphale, nothing to complain about next to a double smiting after days of purification. 

Aziraphale stayed standing long enough to collect two mugs and pour a hefty measure of water into each. He holds one out to Crowley who blinks and miracles the water to wine before taking the less-full mug. Aziraphale shoots him a baleful look, but does not change it back. He settles into the chair across from the sofa and puts his feet up on the milk crate footstool. He takes a sip of the wine and grimaces. 

“Really, dear?” he asks, “The 84?” 

Crowley shrugs, sinking deeper into the cushions. His own exhaustion is catching up with him. They’d gone to a new area of London and he’d had to miracle a great many roads back into working order. 

He tilts his mug back and takes a long draw, hiding his own grimace because, okay, yeah, he should have gone for the 85. It was just that even numbered vintages had always been easier for him. 

“Do you remember the last time I,” he pauses to wiggle his fingers towards Aziraphale’s mug, “for you?” 

Aziraphale smiles behind his own mug, swept up in the memories. 

He chuckles. “Of course, I do dearest,” he says. “It was 1952 and you’d just accidentally redirected the-”

“Nope!” Crowley cuts him off. He can feel his face blazing and curses himself. Nearly a full century later and he’s still embarrassed. He clears his throat and dares to glance at Aziraphale who has a perfectly innocent smile on his face. Oh, he how he adores his terrible, terrible no good angel. 

He takes a sip of his own drink and says, “No, it was sixty-nine.” 

Aziraphale stills. He slowly lowers his mug to his lap. Crowley watches as his fingers tremble against the ceramic of the mug he’s taken to using since the last of their glassware succumbed to exhausted fumbling after he’d spent too long working on purifying the water of the little creek that ran through Tadfield proper. There were a number of communities downstream and he’d been at it for nearly three days before Crowley found him and put a stop to it. He’d drug the angel back to the Air Base, gradually supporting more and more of his weight, poured him a glass of wine, and then watched in frozen horror as the glass slipped from Aziraphale’s exhausted hands to shatter across the ground. He’d apologized and blustered as Crowley snapped away the debris and gently guided him down onto the sofa. 

Crowley tears his eyes away from the mug. Sure, Aziraphale purified ground today, but he’d been good, he’d stopped himself long before they reached that point. There’s no reason for Crowley to be thinking about the way Aziraphale’s cheeks had looked gaunt, the weakness in the spasming hands, the high points of color on his cheeks, stark against ashen skin. 

No reason at all. 

Crowley sighs. 

He forces a smile. Adam has been going on about self-actualization again and he’d promised to make a sincere attempt to practice positive visualization. Smile on the outside and you smile on the inside. It all sounds like total rot to Crowley, but Adam always seems to know when he isn’t practicing and he hates the lectures[6]. 

“The moon landing,” Aziraphale says and there’s something in his voice that hasn’t been there for a long time, something Crowley has missed without realizing that his missed it. 

“Yes,” he says slowly, drawing the word out and buying time before he’ll need to say anything of note again, “The Americans and that tiny little capsule.” 

Aziraphale laughs, low and quiet and Crowley’s heart _aches_ because he knows now what is was he’d heard in Aziraphale’s voice. 

_Love._

Aziraphale has never stopped loving the humans, Crowley doesn’t think the angel even has it in him to stop loving them, no matter what. That’s part of the problem really, the war broke Aziraphale’s heart in a way that Crowley can’t repair. The weeks, months afterward had been terrible, honestly some of the worst in Crowley’s long, long life. He’d been shell-shocked, aching from the loss of not only the comfortable routines he’d built for himself, but also the entire world he’d known. It was one thing to know that everything changes, that as an immortal being you were never going to be allowed to keep anything you loved, it was another entirely to have it all ripped away so suddenly. 

Aziraphale, who had rather grown to like the occasional nap when the mood struck him, hasn’t slept since 1997. 

The point of all this is to say that while Aziraphale has never stopped loving humanity, they _had_ betrayed his trust and shattered his heart in a way that can’t be repaired. Aziraphale had put everything on the line for them once, when he stood before Heaven and Hell and told them that he would be choosing Humanity, thank you very much and oh if you don't mind we’re cancelling the apocalypse, we’ve quite enough going on right now and just can’t be bothered. 

Aziraphale gave up everything for them and they betrayed him and so Crowley has not heard that sort of pure fondness in his voice for decades. 

“Do you know,” Aziraphale says, “I’d almost forgotten we watched it together.”

He laughs again and takes a long sip of the wine, “I cannot believe I’d forgotten that.” 

Crowley smiles at him because he doesn’t mind at all. Aziraphale had been so afraid in those days, so very wary of being watched or caught or known in the ways that Crowley wanted to know him. It’s hard to remember things through that sort of fear. 

He knows that better than most.

“‘Salright,” he says taking another long sip of wine. He really should have sprung for the eighty-five.

Aziraphale shakes his head, “No, no it’s not. Crowley do you realize we might never-,” he pauses and gathers his thoughts, “We might never again see the humans strive towards something for the sake of achieving it and not simple survival.” 

Crowley thinks back, remembers that afternoon. He’d been lonely and exhausted, having spent the last few years jetting between the Soviet Union and the Americas, spreading trouble and encouraging the scientists to ever greater heights of hubris[7]. 

He’d been so happy to see Aziraphale, he recalls, so happy to see a smiling face and be welcomed in with no ulterior motives for the first time in years. 

* * *

**_July, 1969_ **

* * *

When the door to A.Z.Fell and Co Booksellers swung open at half two in the morning of July 21st, 1969 Aziraphale forced himself to resist releasing the soul deep sigh that wanted to escape. He (very benevolently) did not turn on annoying music or declare that the shop was _closed_ that you very much. He did manifest a rather unpleasant mildew-adjacent smell and arrange his face into the precise disappointed scowl that seemed to elicit a primal sort of guilt and discomfort in the denizens of the Isles in this era. In his annoyance it quite escaped him that humans did not typically enter businesses at that time of night with noble intentions. 

“Ugh, angel,” Crowley’s voice reached him from the front of the shop, “Stop it with the grotty smell, would you? It’s just me.” 

Aziraphale blinked. He gestured the smell away and stood from his desk. 

“Crowley,” he greeted, knowing that his pleased smile had entirely erased the guilt-inducing look on his face. He glanced to the bright moonshine streaming in through the windows despite the film of dust he worked to maintain, both for the health of the books and his own sanity (humans tended to find dusty shops unpleasant to linger in after all). 

“It’s awfully early for you to be visiting,” he said, carefully. He did not wish to offend, but Crowley stepping so bolding through his door in the middle of the night like this seemed like he was tempting fate (or at least tempting Gabriel’s ire). 

Aziraphale watched as Crowley picked up a book, flipped idly through the pages before setting it down and picking up another. He paced back and forth, seemingly filled with even more nervous energy than normal.

“Whatever is the matter?” Aziraphale asked after a few moments of this. 

“It’s all happening today,” Crowley said, running one hand through his hair, mussing it and then snapping to force it back into strict order. He glanced down at his watch and then out at the passing humans before continuing, “Soon. Very soon.”

“What is?” Aziraphale asked, then his eyes widened as he realized the only thing that might elicit such a genuinely nervous reaction in Crowley. 

“You mean-?” 

Crowley nodded. “They’re doing it,” he said, “The mad bastards are really going to do it.” 

Aziraphale sits down. Of course it’s the goal both he and Crowley have been carefully working towards for the last ten or so years, guiding various humans while thwarting others in one of the rare occasions that their orders aligned. He just- well, if Aziraphale were to be honest with himself he never really thought they would get this far. 

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “Distract me.” 

Aziraphale jumped. Crowley didn’t- Crowley never made those sorts of requests. 

“What?” he asked, sure he’d misheard. 

Crowley snapped his fingers and a small, battered television set appeared across from the little sofa. Aziraphale glared balefully at it. 

“Surely we can use the radio?” he asked. “Must that _thing_ be in here?” Televisions aren’t exactly new, but a scarce few decades felt like mere moments to a being as old as Aziraphale. He was rather resistant to change in all its forms. 

“Absolutely not!” Crowley proclaimed, “I will not _not_ see them take those steps. I refuse!” 

Aziraphale can’t help but laugh because Crowley was a demon, the hand of the Adversary on Earth, and he sounded like a petulant child. 

“Very well, dear boy,” he said. “If you insist.” 

“I do.” 

There was a pause, a silence that climbed towards comfortable but couldn’t quite reach the top of the cliff to pull itself to safety due to a certain demon’s anxiety yanking it downward with every twitch of his hands. 

He’d asked Aziraphale to distract him. Very well. Aziraphale could manage that. 

“Did you know,” he asked, “That I was actually obliged to sell a book last week?” 

Crowley tilted his head around and back, rolling it so he might face Aziraphale without rising from hsi sprawled position. 

“Did they have you at gunpoint?” he asked. 

Aziraphale snorted and launched into the entire, sordid tale. He delighted in the way Crowley’s shoulders slowly relaxed as he spoke, dropping from his ears to a more natural position even as his spine curved further into the sofa. 

Finally, as Aziraphale detailed his plans to retrieve the book upon the purchaser’s death (in many years, he wasn’t a monster, just patient), Crowley glanced at his watch. 

“It’s time,” he said. The nerves were back, though he still looked more relaxed than he had. 

He sat up, swinging his legs around to make room for Aziraphale and producing two crystal glasses. He poured some water from the carafe Aziraphale always kept full and almost never used. Then, he crossed his eyes and concentrated, working to shift the molecules to add electrons and orbits and not have the entire thing blow up in his face. Slowly, the water shifted from clear to a rich amber. 

“Bourbon?” Aziraphale asked with a raised eyebrow. “Not our usual.” 

“American though,” Crowley said taking the first sip of his and smiling, “Seems appropriate.” 

Aziraphale crossed the small space and settled on the sofa beside him. He could feel the nervous energy radiating from the demon. 

“Is it,” he paused and swallowed, “It is inappropriate for me to ask why you’re so-?” He gestured with his free hand, unable to find a word that wouldn’t offend Crowley’s rather delicate self-perception. 

Crowley swirled the bourbon in his glass. The fingers of his other hand tapped away at his thigh. 

“It’s just- I mean to say,” he sighed, “It’s big right? The big one? The first time they’re going to do this and they won’t stop. They’re going to reach up and up and up and maybe one day they’ll go far enough we can’t go with them anymore and they’ll really be free for the first time. They’ll have the Free Will they were promised all those years ago and I can’t, I mean I don’t want to have- erg.” He trailed off, no longer able to find the words that might slip past the blockage in his throat. 

Luckily, Aziraphale understood. It would be many years yet before he could admit it aloud, but moments like this were why he’d fallen in love so very long ago. 

“I blessed Armstrong,” he said instead of any of the exceedingly sappy things that wanted to escape him. 

“What?” Crowley’s eyes are so wide, the yellow of them is clearly visible above the rim of his sunglasses. 

Aziraphale dared to lay one hand on Crowley’s wrist. The demon’s dancing fingers stilled. 

“It will be alright,” Aziraphale promised. 

The broadcast crackled to life and they settled into silence as the newscasters explained what was happening. There was a debate about ethics that had Crowley rolling his eyes and Aziraphale leaning forward, intrigued and a discussion of the process by which the astronauts were chosen. 

“Notably missing that minute when a demon lost half the files,” Aziraphale muttered. 

“Or when an angel made sure to arrange for transport for their wives,” Crowley shot back. 

Then, it was time. 

The commentators stopped talking and all that could be heard was the crackle of the broadcast being projected into every home around the world with access to a television. 

The screen flickered to black and back to the anchor, and then to black again. It didn’t come back and Aziraphale could feel Crowley’s anxiety ratcheting up. 

“I believe I owe you one,” he said and snapped, and just like that, the pigeon who had decided to nest atop the receiving tower in Pasadena decided that that was a rather bad idea and moved on. 

The screen flickered once more and then there it was. 

Neil Armstrong slowly lowered himself onto the surface relaying information back to Earth the entire time. He was breathing hard and sounded half awed as he spoke. It was humbling even for beings as ancient as they were, Aziraphale thought, to know so many eyes were on a single person. 

“That’s one small step for man,” Armstrong said and even from this far away it was obvious how his voice trembled. Aziraphale felt his throat grow tight. “One giant leap for mankind.” 

Crowley laughed, “That’s the worst,” he declared, “The worst. I can’t believe that’s the one they went with. I gave them so many other better ones!” But he was smiling and looked as if he could fly to the moon and back without breaking a sweat so Aziraphale knew he wasn’t really upset. 

“It is rather baffling,” he agreed, sipping at his drink. Armstrong was moving away from the camera now, exploring further away and wasn’t that just the most human thing? Go to the moon, land on it and immediately want to know more. 

Oh, how he loved them. 

Aldrin eventually exited the lander and joined Armstrong on the surface and neither Crowley nor Aziraphale could bear to tear their eyes from the screen. 

“I can’t believe you blessed him,” Crowley said as they watched the astronauts bound about the surface of the moon. The tension had entirely leaked from him now. “We promised no direct interference.” 

Aziraphale smiled. 

“Well, yes, but this was important to you. Even before you explained why I knew that. I wanted it to go well.” 

There was silence. 

After a moment Aziraphale turned to see Crowley staring at him, mouth slightly open, brows quirked up and in. As soon as he noticed Aziraphale looking he drained the rest of his glass and turned back to the television and the humans so very far away. 

He rubbed at his eyes, careful not to displace the sunglasses. 

Aziraphale frowned because that was not the reaction he’d been expecting. 

“My dear,” he said, “Are you quite alright?” 

“M’fine,” Crowley said thickly, “It’s just, well, did you ever think they’d make it there?”

“What do you mean?” 

“Back in the garden, watching Adam and Even, did you ever think their descendants would one day be- Remember how Eve loved the moon?” 

Aziraphale smiled. He did remember. She’d spent hours staring up at it, marveling at the way it changed each night and drawing little pictures of it using sticks in the dirt. It had been charming and sweet and probably the first thing that made Aziraphale love humans for what they were rather than what he’d been told they were to be. 

He breathed in. He could smell the cooking oil from Mrs. Jeffords, who ran the kitchen of the Local across the way, and hear clapping and cheering from dozens of over-tired people gathered in pubs and backrooms all around them. When he’d ventured out to the park earlier in the day he’d seen children dressed as spacemen, chasing each other between the trees, shouting their glee to the world as their harried parents looked on indulgently and he was suddenly so incredibly, irrepressibly fond of them all. 

“Well, no,” he said, “But, I’d always hoped they might. No, that’s not quite right. ,” he pauses to think about his words before speaking again, “I, well, I suppose I always had faith that they could manage it.”

Crowley grinned at him then, huge and real and completely without a filter for once. 

“Yeah,” he said, “Me too.” 

* * *

**_Today_ **

* * *

Aziraphale is lost in the memory of that peaceful night in 1969 until long after Crowley finishes his mug of wine and stands. He absently accepts a kiss and watches as Crowley leaves the room, making for the tiny bedroom at the back of the hut. He’ll join him in a bit, he promises himself. He’s too tired to do anything but stand and crawl into bed and he doesn’t have his collection these days to occupy his mind during the long nights. 

He’s sad, he realizes after a bit. Sad and a tad lonely, despite the demon he can now hear snoring less than three meters away. It’s not Crowley and it’s nothing Crowley can fix. It’s the way the world is now. It’s getting better, Aziraphale knows it is. He’s pouring himself into ensuring that they leave every place they visit better than they find it and he knows that it’s helping. But, he misses the casual community of Before. Of course he loves the people of the RAF Tadfield. They’re a lovely bunch, filled with the determination to make it all better, to live good lives and to raise children who were not only happy and healthy, but also who knew how to play, how to do more than merely survive. No, there’s nothing more any of them could do to ease his loneliness because it’s about missing the little connections with strangers. He’d had a barber before, a manicurist, a man who he passed on the street every third Tuesday and whom he missed seeing. He missed being among the throngs of people and knowing that it was where he was meant to be.

He hates that he’s sad, because Crowley has worked so hard to make this place feel like home and Aziraphale loves him so very much. But, it’s hard to find anything approaching good cheer past his exhaustion. 

He sighs. 

“Buck up,” he tells himself, “Stiff upper lip and all that.” 

He’s not one for repression, not these days. Not when he remembers all to clearly the devastation of losing Madame Tracy, of watching her fade no matter what he tried, or of watching Adam nearly burn himself out entirely trying to rewrite the world, a task too daunting for even the AntiChrist. 

They’d only survived by talking, by explaining to Adam, who was seventeen and desperate, that the little things were big too, especially when the big things were impossible. 

It was easy to say and far harder to remember for himself. 

Eventually, he stood and drained the last of his glass. He tidied their new acquisitions and left the rest of the sweets in a little pile on the desk, in case anyone called on them while he was sleeping, and made his way back to the bedroom. 

Crowley is sprawled across the entire bed and Aziraphale’s heart swells. He’s sad, but that’s not enough to diminish his love for his demon. He dresses in his nightclothes the human way and slips between the sheets. Crowley immediately rolls closer, wrapping his limbs around Aziraphale and pressing his head into Aziraphale’s side. 

“Goodnight, my love,” Aziraphale whispers into the darkness. 

“Gnha,” Crowley responds. 

* * *

**_Tomorrow_ **

* * *

In the morning, Crowley will wake to an empty room. It’s not unusual, so he won’t think anything of it. Aziraphale doesn’t sleep much, even as exhausted as he is these days and Crowley will have the vague memory of an angel in his arms for at least some of the night. So, Crowley will wake alone and stretch across the bed, reveling in one of the few genuine luxuries they allow themselves. He’d miracled these sheets into being years ago, no one was going hungry or thirsty now because he was too tired to help them. 

Crowley will stay in bed until nearly noon before slithering from between the silk sheets and to his feet. He’ll stretch, hands high above his head and spine arched far past the limitations of his ostensibly human form. Then, he’ll make his way through the little flat behind _The Common Good(s)._

As he enters the kitchen, Aziraphale will look up and bless him with a smile, one filled with all the warmth of the sun before the Winter and the promise of months, years, decades to come. Crowley will return the smile with one of his own, though he’ll tell himself that his is far more lascivious, seeing as he _is_ a demon[8]. 

They’ll sit in silence, enjoying the last of the tea they found nearly three years ago now. It’s been parceled out to only be used as a reward for returning from another trip and Crowley won’t be able to bring himself to regret it’s loss, not when he sees the way the steam curls around Aziraphale’s face, or feels the peace it settles into his own gut. Then, the bell above the entrance to Common Good(s) will ring and Aziraphale will swallow the last of his tea, rising from the table to kiss Crowley’s forehead and go to work. 

Crowley will take a few more minutes before cleaning their mugs and dressing. He doesn’t have a specific job, he generally helps out around the camp wherever he’s needed, but when he has free-time there’s only one thing he wants to do. 

He’ll make his way across the camp, stopping to tickle Anathema and Newt’s youngest grandchild, nearly three years old now and toddling around after anyone who will move slow enough for him. People will shout greetings to him as he goes and he’ll respond in kind, reveling in each voice he hears because these are the people they managed to save, these are the hope for humanity. Oh, of course there are people everywhere, no matter how many bombs fell it wouldn’t never have been enough to get rid of all the humans. He and Aziraphale travel as far as they can, helping people the world over when they have the energy for that degree of transit. But, the people of the RAF Tadfield are different in way Crowley can’t, won’t, quantify. They’re his and they’re Aziraphale’s and those are the only words he has for it[9]. 

Having made his way across the camp, Crowley will install himself in the radio room and wait. 

He’ll think about the expression on Aziraphale’s face when he comes home later, having wasted another entire day in futile hope even as he knows it’s not something he can stop doing, nor would Aziraphale ever ask him to. 

He’ll just have settled in with an old Walkman and a tape he left in the Bentley with the express purpose of having an extra Best Of to take with him when it happens. 

See, there’s a ritual to his time in the radio room. Arrive. Check the records, follow up on any notes he doesn’t understand. Settle back in the rickety old chair. Contemplate use of a miracle to make chair more comfortable. Dismiss the idea. Wait. Listen to music. Go home, disappointed and hurting but determined that he would not be discouraged in his search. Do again the next day. 

He’ll expect that everything will be the same this time. Why would he think anything different? So, he’ll be almost casual as he settles in to wait and listen. 

Except. 

The radio will crackle. 

Crowley will look up from his Walkman. He’ll reach over and flip the ‘receiving’ switch. He’ll turn back to the music, prepared to hear the standard requests for shelter or aid. 

What he’ll hear instead will steal the unnecessary breath from his lungs. 

“This is Nanny’s Boy, I repeat, this is Nanny’s Boy, is there anyone out there?”

Crowley won’t be able to speak, frozen by shock because it might have been nearly forty years, but he knows that voice. _He knows that voice_. 

“Dammit, alright look, I was told there were some survivors around here. I’ve got medicine and some food,” Warlock, because it will be Warlock Dowling, now forty-nine years old and hardened by the world he’s been navigating on his own, will go on, “No trade needed, it’s yours.”

Crackling static will fill the line. Crowley will want to move, will want to do anything. Won’t be able to. 

“Only,” Warlock will whisper, voice warped, distorted, “I’m looking for someone. I’d hoped I might find-”

And that will release him, will unlock his muscles. Crowley will lunge for the microphone, “Warlock,” he’ll say and suddenly he’ll realize he’s crying, “Warlock!”

“Nanny!” Warlock will call even as Crowley’s gesturing wildly for someone, anyone, to go get Aziraphale. “Where the fuck are you!?”

“Doesn’t matter I’ll come to you, give me coordinates.” 

He’ll be demanding, harsh, but Warlock won’t mind because he’s been searching for his Nanny for forty years, growing more desperate with each year that passed (Because, Nanny hadn’t been young even back then. It’s the same reason he’s long since given up hope of finding Brother Francis.). 

Warlock will laugh and tell Crowley a location less than ten kilometers away. 

“You stay there!” He’ll command and then he’ll laugh again and say, “We’re coming for you.” 

Then, he’ll drop the microphone and run full-tilt across the camp until he slides to a stop in front of Aziraphale, hair a disaster and eyes shining. He’ll wrap Aziraphale in a tight embrace, drop an ecstatic kiss on his lips and, cupping his angel’s face he’ll say, “Warlock called!” 

Aziraphale won’t understand for a moment and then he’ll be laughing too, because he couldn’t save Madame Tracy or Shadwell or so many others and he’d thought that the boy they raised was one of that number and he wasn’t. 

He wasn’t. 

“Oh, _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale will breathe. 

“Yeah,” Crowley’s smile will soften and he’ll press another quick kiss to Aziraphale’s lips before he says, “Let’s go get our boy.” 

And they will. 

There will be tears and laughter and explanations about names and Warlock will show them the supplies he brought and tell them all about the last four decades and something broken in both Aziraphale and Crowley will heal just that little bit more. 

But, that’s tomorrow. 

* * *

**Footnotes:**

1Hell, Beelzebub in particular on one of their rare visits to Earth, had been instrumental in the establishment of chiropractic medicine as a field. They’d always been bitter that their achievement was rapidly overshadowed by Crowley’s nearly simultaneous encouragement of patent medicines.[return to text]  
2Note: not the Pits. In Hell the distinction is important.[return to text]  
3He’d always liked disease, had, in fact, sent a few rather embarrassing poems to Pestilence back in the Bad Old Days of the first Plague to ravage the ever growing mass of humans in Babylon.[return to text]  
4If questioned, neither Crowley nor Aziraphale will admit to easing the aches and pains of the humans around them. However, it is worth noting that both Crowley and Aziraphale are perfectly comfortable lying under oath.[return to text]  
5Capitals required and pronounced. It was an appropriate name for the angel’s reaction after one of the Oxford set had attempted to hold one of Wensleydale and Brian’s children in exchange for a water purification device. I’ll not go into details here beyond saying that 1) the child was returned to her fathers unharmed and 2) the offending human was returned to his people in a rather less whole state.[return to text]  
6There is something to be said for a demon being so willing to accommodate human whims, but Aziraphale is the only one who might make that comment and he’s been wholeheartedly behind Adam’s psychological kick.[return to text]  
7If he has selfish reasons for wanting them to go to space, well, no one else ever has to know that, do they?[return to text]  
8Please note, it won’t be. It will never be. Crowley can’t look anything but gently adoring at his angel in these conditions.[return to text]  
9Had Crowley managed to say any of this aloud to a human they would have smiled and nodded because the sensation Crowley was struggling to describe was ‘family’.[return to text]


End file.
